President Donald Trump plans to launch a crackdown on China Monday by announcing an investigation into the country’s trade practices and allegations that China violated U.S. intellectual property rights, U.S. officials told multiple outlets Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, Trump called his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, to warn him that the U.S. will conduct an investigation into China’s trade practices with the U.S., a senior administration official told CNN. Trump plans to order U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to launch the probe Monday with the goal of identifying unfair trade practices that have places the U.S. at a severe economic and financial disadvantage.

The probe, which will rely upon Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and could result in steep tariffs, will begin as U.S. tensions with North Korea continue to escalate while Trump pressures the Chinese to exert their influence over North Korea and its nuclear missile program.

"The United States government can, and does, work with countries to address serious concerns such as North Korea while also pursuing measures to address economic concerns, such as the theft of U.S. intellectual property," a U.S. National Security Council official told CNN.

Trump has been walking along a tenuous tightrope with China ever since...

North Korea took its turn Saturday in the country’s escalating, back-and-fourth with President Trump with the state-run newspaper saying leader Kim Jung Un’s revolutionary army is “capable of fighting any war the U.S. wants.”

The assertion was made in an editorial that also states the Paektusan army is now “on the standby to launch fire into its mainland, waiting for an order of final attack."

The editorial in North Korea on Saturday also said the U.S. "finds itself in an ever worsening dilemma, being thrown into the grip of extreme security unrest by the DPRK. This is tragicomedy of its own making. … If the Trump administration does not want the American empire to meet its tragic doom in its tenure, they had better talk and act properly."

DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The editorial appears to be in response to a series of comments made by Trump in recent days, most recently Friday that the United States is “locked and loaded.”

The president's recent comments are in response to Kim threatening a missile attack on U.S. territory Guam.

Trump, meanwhile, continues to pursue a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s purported development of a nuclear warhead that could...

ROME (Reuters) – Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Saturday it was suspending its migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because it felt threatened by the Libyan coastguard and the Italian government’s policies have made its job harder.

The aid group’s decision is the latest development in mounting tensions between Rome and NGOs as migration dominates Italy’s political agenda ahead of elections early next year.

“We are suspending our activities because now we feel that the threatening behavior by the Libyan coastguard is very serious … we cannot put our colleagues in danger,” the president of MSF’s Italian arm Loris De Filippi told Reuters.

Almost 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years, the vast majority setting sail from lawless Libya in flimsy vessels operated by people smugglers. More than 13,000 migrants have died trying to make the crossing.

Charity boats have played a growing role in rescues, picking up more than a third of all migrants brought ashore so far this year against less than one percent in 2014.

However, Italy fears the groups are facilitating people smuggling and encouraging migrants to make the passage, and it has proposed a Code of Conduct governing how they operate.

Some groups, including MSF, have refused to sign the code.

They object to a requirement that Italian police officers be on their boats and that the boats must take migrants to a safe port themselves, rather than transferring them to other vessels to allow smaller boats to stay in the area for further rescues.

15 interesting facts about “What Does the Fox Say?”

1) The original song was an advertisement for a Norwegian talk show

The Ylvisåker brothers are a comedy duo from Norway, and the original idea for creating the track and the video was simply to promote the brothers’ third season of their talk show, I Kveld Med Ylvis (Tonight With Ylvis). Instead, the brothers got a little more than they expected.

“We’re not chasing the next hit,” Bård told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “We’re just making stuff that we think is funny. Some [videos] will get like 100,000 views and some obviously got 100 million, but it’s the same recipe. It’s supposed to be three minutes for a Norwegian talk show and this one traveled.”

2) Both brothers have a musical background

The two spent part of their boyhoods in Mozambique and Angola, and according to Bård, they were so socially awkward when they returned to their native Norway that “we almost became those douches who pull out the guitar by the campfire,” he said, via the Star. Vegard also learned how to play the double bass, while Bård studied the violin. “Our parents were always really fond of music and they encouraged us to do whatever we wanted to do. We went to choir and stuff when we were kids,” Bård told Entertainment Weekly. According to Vegard, the songs were never meant to be taken seriously, even in their younger years. “We sang continuously, we made small music things in our room,” Vegard said. “But it was always with a comic context. We always hide behind that. We’re too much of cowards to actually mean something.”

President Donald Trump’s escalation of his rhetorical assaulton Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday did not go over well with GOP senators, but it appears to have the approval of the conservative activist base.

After sending three separate tweets tweaking McConnell over the failure to repeal Obamacare last month, Trump hit the senator during a pair of separate news conferences in Bedminster, New Jersey. He came close to calling for McConnell to step down as Senate Republican leader.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, if he doesn’t get repeal and replace done, and if he doesn’t get taxes done — meaning cuts and reform — and if he doesn’t get a very easy one to get done, infrastructure, if he doesn’t get them done, then you can ask me that question,” he said.

Trump made clear he remains upset over the way McConnell handled the health care debate.

"But I said, 'Mitch, get to work and let's get it done,'" he said. "They should have had this last one done. They lost by...

A myriad of distinguished professors and social scientists have already confirmed what James Damore wrote in his Google memo: men and women are measurably different.

The Google guy behind the infamous gender memo, James Damore, is a troglodyte. An embarrassing, knuckle-dragging, flat-earther who is under the silly illusion that men and women have inherent differences. Google properly fired him for just being stupid. At least that’s the fashionable story.

But the truth is that it was Damore who got it right. (And his main concern was how to get more women working at Google, after all.)

Most of us know exactly why gender parity doesn’t exist in Silicon Valley. It’s not because they are consciously (or unconsciously) denying employment to women who are seeking jobs there. Actually, quite the opposite. It’s the fact that while women outpace men in college attendance today, those interested in STEM programs lag significantly behind. Other professions tend to interest them more. In fact, the annual U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index reported last year that enrollment among women in such programs declined from 2015 to 2016.

U.S. News reports that “Women may lag behind men in areas like engineering, for example, but they far outstrip men in earning biology degrees.” For instance, women make up 80 percent of the students enrolled in the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Wendy Williams, a professor in Cornell’s Department of Human Development, explains that “Women are choosing to...

Nearly 20 people were convicted on Wednesday of abusing girls in Newcastle, U.K. — part of an orchestrated rape gang operated by Muslim men.

In total, 17 Muslim men and a native-British female accomplice were convicted of over 100 charges stemming from crimes against 22 victims. Court documents reveal how the gang groomed British teen girls with drugs and alcohol before subjecting them to “sessions” in which they were raped by multiple men.

But the extent of the rape gang and its crimes could be significantly larger. Despite the convictions the investigation is still ongoing, and the 18 individuals convicted Wednesday may be but a fraction of those involved. Investigators have so far made a total of 461 arrests,...

Actress Jodie Foster has revealed that Hollywood executives attempted to rape her when she was a teenager trying to break into the industry.

Foster told an interviewer this week that a top Hollywood producer tried to sexually abuse her when her parents were out of town.

The revelations by Foster come hot on the heels of claims by other Hollywood celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Corey Feldman, and Elijah Wood – all of whom have personally witnessed the elite Hollywood pedophile ring in action.

The Fix reports: The 53-year-old revealed that a male producer called her while she was at a friend’s sleepover and “pretended” that she’d missed a meeting, knowing that her mother was out of town.

“He had me come to the appointment and was talking to me, and asked me to take my jacket off and....

When former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and President Bill Clinton were busted secretly meeting aboard Lynch's private plane last summer by a local television reporter, a number of government watchdog groups filed lawsuits for documents surrounding the meeting. After all the FBI, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, was actively investigating Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information at the time. In response to information requests, the FBI and DOJ said documents didn't exist.

Fast forward more than a year and it turns out hundreds of documentsrelated to the meeting do exist and show the Department was in a panic over how to respond to inquiries about why the meeting took place. Public affairs was bombarded with questions about the meeting and repeatedly referred to Lynch's comments on the matter without offering further explanation. At least one reporter from...

As part of Operation SOAR (Sex Offender Alien Removal), a 10-day operation that ended on August 3, Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency arrested 32 criminal aliens previously convicted of sex crimes in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Long Island, New York. Welcome to Trump's America.

Breitbart reports that ERO officers rounded up 32 criminal aliens who were previously convicted of sex crimes, including sexual abuse, sexual assault on young children, rape, child endangerment, and promoting sexual performance of a child. They reportedly entered the U.S. illegally from Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Among those arrested were:

A 24-year-old Salvadoran national who was arrested and charged criminally with first degree sexual abuse and sexual contact with a victim less than 11 years old.

A 36-year-old national of Guatemala with a prior conviction of second degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child. The victim in this case was a 13 year old female.

After Barack Obama’s eight long years of gutting America’s missile-defense capabilities, our nation has awakened to the nightmare of a North Korea armed with nuclear missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory.

Fortunately, Donald Trump, who, unlike his predecessor, takes his responsibility to defend the nation seriously, now resides in the White House, and Obama, one in a series of Democrat presidents who cleared the way for the nuclear adventurism of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is on the outside looking in.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” President Trump told reporters yesterday after applauding the unanimous weekend approval of the toughest U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against North Korea to date. “They will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis issued a statement urging North Korea to back off or suffer the consequences. “The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people,” he said. “While our State Department is making every effort to resolve this global threat through diplomatic means, it must be noted that the combined allied militaries now possess the most precise, rehearsed, and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth.”

But not all of the blame for the status quo can be assigned to Democrats.

North Korea has long massed troops near the border with South Korea, effectively holding the population of nearby Seoul and other densely-populated areas hostage. The DPRK is thought to have the ability to quickly assault and subdue a large chunk of South Korea, with devastating consequences for...

NYC, NY (The New York Post) – A violent illegal immigrant who repeatedly sneaked into the US has now been linked to a slew of rapes in the Bronx and Westchester County — but there’s nothing authorities can do about it.

That’s because the statutes of limitations on the rapes expired by the time the suspect’s DNA was tested, likely thanks to a backlog in cases, law enforcement sources told The Post.

Adding to the mess, the victims “might never, ever know his identity’’ because the cases are now considered closed, the source added.

The saga of criminal Ronald Clare Greenland, 54, began when he first sneaked into the US from Jamaica in the 1980s, sources said. He eventually committed crimes from auto theft to arson and even assaulted a cop, spending several stints in prison.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it tossed him out of the country in 2009 by putting him on a plane back to Jamaica.

But he somehow stole back into the US and had more run-ins with the law.

People living in the West have given up a lot to satisfy their government’s concerns over terrorism. Here in the US for instance, our right to privacy in our homes, on our persons, and especially in our communications, has essentially died since 9/11. Everything we say on our phones or search on the internet is catalogued by the NSA without a warrant, we can’t fly on an airplane without being groped and prodded by TSA agents, it’s now fairly common to be forced through police checkpoints many miles away from any border.

The US isn’t alone in this regard. Across the board, every Western nation has sacrificed essential freedoms in the name of combating terrorism. The only difference is that unlike in the US, most Western nations have sacrificed more speech related freedoms rather than privacy (though all Westerners have lost both rights to some degree). This is especially true in Europe and Canada, where expressing right wing opinions or criticizing Islam is now considered a hate crime, and is believed to be an invitation for more....

The Los Angeles County Coroner has reported the death of Gemmel Moore, 26, of an accidental meth overdose at 7:22 p.m. on July 27 at the West Hollywood home of high-profile Democratic Party donor and political activist, Ed Buck. The youth’s death reportedly occurred just hours after he left his family in Texas in order to join Buck.

While a case detail report filed by the medical examiner lists the manner of Gemmel Moore’s death as an “accident” and its cause as “methamphetamine use,” the deceased man’s mother told the WeHo Times that something more nefarious may have occurred in the short hours between when her son hopped on a plane using a ticket she says was purchased by the well connected Buck, and the moment he took his final breath.

“I called one of my son’s friends and was like, ‘who the hell is Edward Buck?'” LaTisha Nixon said, speaking from her home in Spring Texas during a phone interview. “And my son’s friend was like, ‘oh my God, that’s that white guy, that wealthy white politician guy… he was like ‘oh my God…’”

“When he calmed down, he told me that Ed Buck was one of my son’s clients and that Ed Buck was one of his clients as well,” Nixon said. “[Buck] would have my son to go out to… Santa Monica Boulevard looking for young gay black guys so he could inject them with drugs, see their reaction and how [they] would react and take pictures of them.”

Nixon says a detective from the West Hollywood Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who called her following her son’s death said...